Yearly Archives: 2009

Hey everyone! Alex is writing a blog post… or more of an apology, actually. So we promised a post about Disneyland, but we’ve been distracted. Mostly it was me distracting Julia and taking over the computer.

You see, the new version of Picasa, Google’s free image organizing/editing software has something called face recognition. This basically means that you can organize all your photos according to the faces in the picture. For example, Emmy has something like two thousand pictures on our computer, and Kaylee has about a thousand (the second child is always overlooked, right Kaylee?). Anyway, it is somewhat addictive to organize your pictures this way, especially when there are tens of thousands of faces embedded in countless pictures. You see funny things, too: the software for some reason thinks that Emmy and Kaylee look just like their cousins Logan and Joshua, which is true if you look at them a certain way.

Anyway, what this means for all of you is that you can’t see all of our amazing Disneyland pictures. I left a few teasers on my Facebook page, but you have to be my friend (or Julia’s friend) on Facebook to see them. In the mean time we’re busy playing around with Picasa and looking at all the pictures of our beautiful girls. I imagine we’ll have our Disneyland pictures on here any day now… as soon as we’re done playing around in Picasa.

Wow, back to back sports posts! Well, the Albuquerque isotopes are a minor league team for the Dodgers that we like to go watch every summer. This year they made the playoffs so they had a few games last month too! They are really cheap tickets and they have a great stadium so we always have a fun time! They blew a 3 run lead in the 8th and by the end of the ninth we ended up losing by 6…but it was still fun!

Here’s Emmy and Daddy! They are still smiling here so it must be before the 8th inning! I love this picture!

Kaylee has kind of a silly look here but I wanted the one with Christian in the background! My parents had gone to California to attend my Dad’s friend’s funeral so Christian got to spend the weekend with us! We had a lot of fun!

So I wanted to hurry and do this post while BYU is coming off of a win last weekend! 🙂 These pics were actually taken after the Oklahoma game a few weeks back where BYU won in a huge upset! Go Cougs!

I got the girls these little pom-poms from the BYU bookstore so they can take them to the BYU/UNM game in Albuquerque. Emmy wanted to get them out early and “practice” so we brought them out for the fist game of the season.

We took about 10 pictures trying to get one with both their hats on. Kaylee was too fast though…so this was as close as we got! Kaylee’s has a little baby cougar on it and it is really cute. It used to be Emmy’s but we gave it to Kaylee and upgraded Emmy from the infant size to the toddler size!! Congratulations Emmy you finally have a toddler sized head! 🙂

So here they are doing some cheers even though the game has ended! Alex had a couple guys over to watch the game so they were all celebrating as well! It was kind of cute becuase we brought the pom-poms down right before BYU scored their final touchdown and so we told Emmy it was her cheering that helped them win! She was very proud! And Kaylee didn’t totally mangle her pom-pom to death…which was a great accomplishment for her! haha!

Christian’s 21st birthday was the same day that Emmy started school so we had a party for him that night! It was great because I had time to make the cake while Emmy was at school! Anyway, my brother is a huge Gonzaga Basketball fan. He has like 10 different gonzaga shirts and he pretty much just rotates through those for his entire wardrobe! Not to mention his Gonzaga hat and socks! Anyway, we had a Gonzaga themed party and he seemed to like it a lot!

Here’s Christian with his “game face” on enjoying the warm glow of the Gonzaga logo!

Here he is after he calmed down from his original reaction to seeing the cake! haha!

Christian, Alex and Emmy after they are all full of cake!

My mom took this picture of Miss Kaylee begging for some cake! Don’t you think her face just says “oh please Grandma…I know mom says no…but you’ll let me have some cake, right??” I mean, I gave her a big handful of banana puffs. Those are just as good as chocolate cake! 🙂

And some close ups of the cake! Here is one with the big 21 on it!

Here’s one from above! #31 is his basketball number and 3 point guy is his nickname for himself. He was #31 on his church basketball team and when he finished high school the coach retired his jersey and framed it for Christian. They even made him a little inscription about how much he meant to the team! Pretty cool, huh? Happy Belated B-day Christian!

Well, Emmy started Pre-school this year through the school district! She is having so much fun! She just loves it!! So now that school has been in for almost 2 months I’m finally getting around to posting about her first day of school! She was so excited to go meet her teacher and the people in her class!

Emmy was too excited to eat breakfast and spent a lot of the morning trying to walk out the door! She was also really particular about what she wore, how her hair looked, etc! She is quite the Diva sometimes!

Grandma bought her this cute dress at the outlet mall in Park City! It was just perfect for her first day of school!

We got this little snack box free when we bought sleeping beauty! Up until now it had been home to her princess domino set from Grandma Kath…but it is the perfect size for Emmy’s backpack so now it is her lunch box!

I drove her to school the first week so that she could get used to going in and out of the school! Here she is on the front steps with her new backpack and her princess lunch box! I didn’t cry the first day…but looking at this picture makes me a little teary. She just looks like such a big kid now…not a toddler anymore! That went by really fast!! What a good little student! Now Emmy takes a bus to school and she loves it! One of the girls in her class catches the bus at our house each morning and the bus driver goes to church with us! She loves seeing them each morning! Her driver gives them invisible mice to play with on the bus…which she thinks is awesome. She is constantly losing the invisible mouse around the house and will ask “have you seen my mouse?”. When we asked what it looked like she said it is bright red and named Mommy! haha!

She was kind of staring in the sun on this one plus she was in a hurry to go inside! 🙂 Some of Emmy’s other favorite things about school are her teachers, the fact that it has a library (so now she gets to go to two every week!), the potty and sink are just her size (she talks about them constantly, haha), the slide inside her classsroom and riding bikes! They have also started learning letter sounds and she is doing great! She also goes to Physical therapy, speech and occupational therapy to work with some of her tone problems from the CP. But her teacher says that she is doing so great that if we work hard now she wont have to be pulled out of class in Elementary school for those kind of things! So, so far so good! Anyway, she is having the time of her life and I am so proud of her! Yeah Emmy!

Well, about a year ago my mom and I decided that we were going to go to BYU education week! I was really pregnant at the time and a little stir crazy so I was super excited to go! Since then I kind of had a lot of trips pop up like girl’s camp, NC, Colorado, Vegas, and coming soon: Disneyland! All of which were AWESOME! I’m not trying to complain or brag…I’m just trying to say that I know we looked a little crazy this year with our trips and that next year will be the year of Los Alamos! At the beginning of the summer I should have just written “DISCLAIMER: The pictures on this blog do not depict typical life for those involved!” So you all have to promise that you will still read our blog next year even if our “stay”cations are not as exciting… okay?? There will still be plenty pictures of cute little Kaylee and Emmy running around! Throw in their super fun cousins, aunt and uncles, and grandparents and it will still be a party on our blog! 🙂

Anyway, Education week was a blast! I went with my Mom and Aunt Cindy! Christina was with us for part of the time too! So we had a total girls week! For those of you who don’t know, ed. week at BYU is basically a week where BYU invites speakers from all over the country to come and present short week long classes on a lot of different topics! If you ever get the chance I highly recommend going! I went to mostly classes on homemaking, family relationships, emotional/spiritual health, and child rearing! I loved it!

Christina started teaching school the week we got there but she got to hang out with us for the weekend! Here we are in the car ready to follow my Mom and Aunt Cindy up to Park City!

My Aunt Cindy gets awesome deals on hotel rooms through her time share association! So she got us this really great room in Park City. It’s the second story of the section painted green! It had two bedrooms, two bath, a kitchen, dining room, and living room! It was pretty much bigger than mine and Alex’s first three apartments! 🙂 The combination of soft beds and no nighttime feedings helped me get super rested!! Playing cards until 3:00 and talking all night helped me get not so rested! So it kept me in a good balance! I had a ton of fun! Thanks Cindy!

Here we are at a restaurant that was right across the street from our room! I had eggs benedict for lunch! One of my favorites! Yummy!

This is my Mom, Christina, me, and Cindy at the restaurant again! You can see the ski trails behind us here! It was really pretty there! I had never really gone to Park City other than the outlet malls (which we went to while we there…score!) The only sad thing was that I kept thinking of Jon and Kate Plus 8 and how they always went to Park City. I miss the good ol’ days of that show!

Here we are in front of the restaurant again! I’m sure the waitress loved taking 3 pics of us!

While we were in Utah we went to Heber to visit my Great Aunt Shirley and also to visit memorial hill. Here is a picture of the WWII memorial. My Grandpa is Hal A. Cummings! All three (yes I have three) of my Grandpas served in the armed forces during WWII and two of them are buried in Heber. My great grandparents are also buried there. When we lived in Utah it was nice to visit the cemetery on Memorial Day!

Here we are at the outlet mall of all outlet malls! They have an Osh Kosh, Carters, and Children’s Place outlet! It’s pretty much all a mother of little girls needs! (With the obvious exception of a KOHL’s)! Anyway, since I’m missing the semi-annual Little Forest Resale this year…I was glad for the outlets’ back to school specials!

Here is Christina in her brand new gym! She teaches P.E. at a beautiful new high school in Springville!

Sorry the sun was too bright through the window! This was such a cute picture I had to put it in any way! This was a really fun day because it combined two of my favorite things: hanging out with my good friend Angela and eating at Cafe Rio! It was so fun to see Angela and Lucas and meet her brand new little boy Marcus!

So this was my best attempt at taking our picture by holding the camera out! It was so much fun to see Angela! I miss her so much down here in Los Alamos! I got to see her great new house and her great new little boy! We had so much fun at lunch that I blew off classes the next afternoon and hung out at her house! Don’t tell Alex I skipped classes though or I’ll be so busted!

BYU also has a lot of affordable nighttime shows and concerts that you can go to! We went to Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat! You can see in the picture it had a Vegas spin on it. It was very cute and we had a great time!

Sisters!! Mom and Cindy at the play!

Sisters! Christina and Julia!

Thanks Cindy, Mom and Christina for the great week! I had a lot of fun and I think the break made me easier to live with…right Alex?? And of course thanks to my awesome husband for watching the girls and letting me go! And thanks to Emmy and Kaylee for watching Daddy so I could go! Well, I feel like I’m giving an acceptance speech so I’m just going to end by saying that Beyonce had the best music video of all time! 🙂 So fun!